


Where the Heart

by Ladycat



Series: Happy Endings [1]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the apocalypse settles down, Connor calls Angel.  Wackiness moves in.</p><p>This is related to the Connor/Spike series of fics where Connor is in college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Heart

Two months go by when Angel picks up the phone.

"I wonder if it's another car accident," Harmony says.

Random summer afternoon and Angel is thinking longingly of throwing himself head-first out the open windows. He'd burn up long before he hit the ground, after all. He's certain.

He remembers.

"What about a car accident, Harmony?"

"You said to put him right through, boss, so this is me, putting him through."

Angel grips the telephone. It squeaks. " _Who_ are you not putting through?"

"The kid. The - Reilly?"

It's actually been not quite two months since the end of the world. Angel looks back out his window, to a city that looks the same as it did two months before, and two years before, and probably two centuries before. It lacked all those sky scrapers, he's sure, but it's essentially the same: the people, the life, the unfettered _always_ that is teeming humanity as it... teems.

Like their sacrifices never were. Like the broken, shattered bodies Angel buried, the blood on his hands that will never wash out, are nightmares out of a story played for laughs on a silver screen.

It's been two months since the end of the world, only the world kept going.

"So... I should put him through, boss? Okay, well. Silence means yes!" Nothing daunts Harmony for very long. Somewhere there's a list of why she's still his secretary. That's on it. "Here you go."

A click and then Angel hears breathing. Barely. "Dad?"

Two months after the end of the world and Connor comes back into his life.

He wants to look for an apartment. "College dorms are pretty sucky, you know," he says, hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels like he doesn't know Angel would give him the damn dragon they _still can't find_ to have him around. "So, I thought. Unless you're busy?"

Angel has no idea what expression he wears at that comment. Whatever it is, Connor offers a ghost of a smile and changes the topic.

They spend almost three weeks looking. Angel figures out, belatedly, that Connor is looking for a lot more things than just an apartment. How to handle the world, for one, because he offers to go hunting with Angel like it's father-son bonding with fishing rods and slow-moving rivers, instead of axes - Connor appreciates a good ax - and sewers that are slow-moving in all the wrong ways. Connor isn't good at talking and the longer they spend together, the longer the pleasant, idle chatter that had so unnerved (impressed) him during Connor's first visit (like a stranger, like _Stephen_ and Angel hates that name, doesn't care that Stephen is also his best tax attorney who doesn't put him to sleep during meetings; he hates him anyway) drains away.

The boy who showed up initially was someone Angel couldn't get a handle on. The smiles, the easy way he'd greeted every bizarre thing without a hint of the broken, despairing boy that Angel cannot forget. The differences were beyond belief. And as Connor looks around yet another place, awkward and unsure, shooting him glances when he thinks Angel's not looking - or maybe when he just can't stop himself, since Angel is always looking and Connor knows it - this feels more and more like his son.

His _son_. Who is asking him about electricity rates. "What?"

Connor waves a piece of paper with columns of neat black numbers shouting disapproval. "This seems kinda high, doesn't it?"

Angel doesn't take the papers. He looks around this place, no different from any other, and says, "Do you like it here?"

There is no uhm, or even a blank stare of _what the hell_. Instead, Connor is still. No hands stuff in bashful pockets, no rocking on his heels like a young man who is unsure of what is going on. Connor's arms are as quiet as the rest of him. Even his heart seems distant and faint, eyes turning gray as he looks across clean hardwood floors at the vampire who is playing can't-catch-me with the last fading hints of sunlight.

The apartment is not bright. Or cozy. Angel... Angel has no idea what would make either of those two things. He just knows this isn't it.

And that his son is watching him. Assessing, _hunting_ , evaluating Angel as he looks around this place Connor doesn't care about, trying to find clues for what he does.

Eventually, Connor says, "No, not really. The place a couple back - the one with the elevator? I liked that one."

It feels like Angel passed a test. He hopes he got good marks; he never does usually, and for a second, all he can think of is Spike - William - who obsessed about those marks the way Connor talks about school now, something arcane and foreign but _important_. Now, at least. Then... Angel pushes that from his mind as Connor looks around with a faint expression of dislike.

"Smells like, uhm."

It smells like something died. Angel nods and ushers them into the car as fast as sunset will allow them.

Offers for dinner or other activities are rarely accepted. Angel tries not to react to that, mostly because a few days will go by and the phone he stares at so intently will ring so the light at the bottom flashes gold, the way he got one of the tiny little eggheads that reminds him of Dalton so strongly he wonders where all the Latin books are. Latin is more understandable than computers, so that may just be Angel's increasing out of depth feeling talking.

Regardless, a few days past Angel's certainty that he's blown it and that Connor will vanish as suddenly as he reappeared, like fruit flies who go from zero to horde and back again before you can blink, only those are annoying so no, not like those, and none of that matters because that little gold light will start blinking and Angel leans back in his chair, trying to smirk, to smile like he knew it all along as he says, "Connor, found another place to look at?"

They're into the second month when Connor answers, "What do you know about signing a lease?"

As it happens, Angel doesn't know all that much. Vampires, souled or not, don't tend to be personal property guarantors and since Wolfram and Hart has pretty much tainted all of his LA associations, he says, "We have a department we could talk to?"

"Oh."

Connor uses his voice directly opposite to how he uses a weapon. With the latter, the more variety and the deadlier, the better. The former is inverse - the flatter, the more emotion he's hiding. That 'oh' is flat enough to make a pancake look decidedly round.

Angel desperately wants to ask where his other (not real, not _real_ ) parents are in all of this. It's a question he'd remove his tongue rather than voice, but it circles his mind like a damnable itch he can't scratch. Part of it is sheer (paternal) upset - they _should_ be there. The Reilly's are good people, good parents. Angel's checked. They're everything he could've wanted for his son, so why they've abandoned him to live at summer housing - which is truly terrible; Connor has to share a bathroom! - and let him apartment hunt in _L.A._ without assistance is familial abandonment that he cannot even believe.

So he doesn't. Because they _are_ better than that, and Connor is breathing, just breathing, while he waits. So patiently.

Angel thinks of all of that in the space of three inhales. "I could take a look at it? If you wanted. I, ah. I'm pretty good at getting what I want from people."

Pride and shame both in his voice, a crossroads to be taken. Connor just chuckles. "I bet. Maybe you could take a look at it? Again? Just in case."

Angel tries to keep his voice casual when he says, "I'd be glad to."

It still sounds like _I love you_.

The conversation doesn't get any less awkward, so to spare them both Connor gives directions and agrees to meet Angel after sunset that Friday. Angel remembers the apartment, of course, the way he remembers every moment of his son looking with those big blue eyes, so like his mother's that Angel forgets they'll never narrow at him the way he expects. Connor expresses anger differently - diffidently, really. None of his mother's vicious rage, her edges sharp despite the softness of her curves, and liable to change for the most insignificant reason.

Connor handles things with long, long fingers that Angel does not think about deeply because this is his son, who opens doors and peers into cabinets and asks questions that any nineteen year old boy would think to ask. All wrong. Except how sometimes one slides in like a stake to Angel's heart, and are never wrong.

Those are gifts. No matter if they hurt. Or maybe because they do.

"So," he says, looking around, "this is the place you like?"

It's ten times better than most of the places Connor chose. Carpets and laundry that doesn't require coins, a kitchen that Angel has learned through research is better than passable, with lots of counter top space. It has two bedrooms, which Angel never comments on.

It has a warm, cozy feel, which he does.

"Uhm. Yeah, I thought so. Too. Plus, elevator."

"Because you're so lazy," Angel says.

"Hey, I could be lazy. It'll help when I move in."

Connor smiles like his mother, too, with an innocence Darla could never really remove no matter how deeply she steeped herself in sin. Or maybe that's his own smile reflected back, shy as rose buds uncertain of the light they reach towards, making his eyes turn almost gray and crinkling along the edges.

"Would you help? I'd save on movers if it's the two of us."

Angel agrees before Connor finishes the request. That gets Angel a smile, too.

Progress. So much of it in a very short time, although Angel argues with himself because it feels like forever. In a way, it is forever. This is Connor as he _should_ have been, if not the Connor who could have been, the one Angel still dreams of whenever his eyes close, awake or asleep. The one who calls him Dad without hesitation, the one who plays hockey, the one who - 

"Dad? Dad! Are you daydreaming?"

Angel opens his eyes. Takes in Connor's Kings Jersey and the ease in which he said - no. Not his name, which Connor uses just as frequently. But who he is. Angel is _Dad_ and in no other reality has he ever heard his son call him that and mean it. All the time.

He's Connor's Dad.

"I didn't think vampires could daydream. It seems... silly, you know?"

Angel shrugs and realizes this is Connor's shrug. "Give me the paper work."

Connor frowns at the lease. "I'm still not sure. It's close, but - "

"Connor." Not son, not yet, but Angel can see a day where he says that and at most he'll get an eye roll at the cheesiness of it all. "Give me the lease."

And Connor does. Squirms, just a little, when Angel signs this and dots that and very clearly bites the inside of his mouth raw as Angel produces some checks and signs them with a flourish. Angel doesn't say anything as stupid as 'my treat' because that's not what this is, and Connor knows at least some of it.

What he does say, though, is, "This is a really nice place." The second bedroom has blue walls. Angel can already see where the pictures and photographs will go, filling this place with Connor's life and Connor's friends, and now Angel is a _part_ of that, signed on the dotted line, with cold green bills to ensure the connection continues.

It doesn't even feel strange. Lots of parents follow this path with their children and Angel is sure, sure as he was when he hid behind a school bus and watched a girl with hair that rivaled the beating sun twirl a lollipop between her fingers, that there is more to come.

"It is. I really like it. The windows will be pretty easy to cover, too." Connor fusses with one, lowering the blinds because while it's mostly not day outside, L.A. sunshine has a habit of reflecting for a while after the fact and Angel is trying not to burst with pleasure and pride because that's not an olive branch. That's a whole _tree_ Connor is offering him. "And I do like it. It feels like home."

"Yeah," Angel agrees. "It really does. Of course you need - "

Connor huffs that line of thinking quiet, rolling his eyes and bumping his shoulder into Angel's. "You'll take me shopping later, okay? Or better yet, just buy it and send it to me. I have no sense of style."

"Of course you do, Connor," he immediately reassures, while Connor's eyebrows go up and up. Angel stops. Connor may wear a Kings jersey but his jeans are ripped at the knee, his sneakers are several months past date, and his hair is begging for a trim. He is all of (four) nineteen years old. "Maybe you should tell me what you already have."

"I have a spreadsheet. My parents," and there's the barest hesitation there, and Angel is probably dreaming when he thinks he hears confusion as well, "have all this stuff packed up for me. But I want it to be nice, you know? I - I want a home."

The last is a secret. A hidden part that Angel knows he cannot truly understand. His homes have always been in _people_ , the place immaterial. But Connor looks around with barely hidden hunger on his face, yearning thick as heart's blood in his voice as he speaks of a shade he'd obviously rather keep in the dark. Pink-cheeked and head-ducked to prove the point.

Offers it to Angel with a sidelong glance before quickly looking away.

And Angel finally, finally gets it.

In his defense, he's still new at this. Connor's been someone else's son for far too long.

Clearing his throat, Angel nods. "I think this will make a really nice one."

And just like that, the storm clouds clear and clear blue skies are smiling up at him. It's gone in a second but Angel can still feel the warmth of that gaze, that happiness that he put there. "Thanks, Dad," Connor says. "I think so, too."


End file.
